


Bitten

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [12]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Biting, F/M, Fantasizing, Imagination, M/M, Male Solo, Masturbation, Other, Recovering Alcoholic, Sexual Fantasy, new kink exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 01:06:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15875346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: Athos looks, and this would surprise most who know him, uncertain in his swiftness, eyes a little wild, and his hand only strays off the hilt of his weapon to press the flesh of his left forearm. Whenever he notices, he flings his hand back to his belt with a flushed impatience. His undone doublet flaps a little, counterpoint to his gait.On the well-trod path from the Louvre Palace back to his quarters, so familiar he could probably make it blindfold, he has plenty of space and time in which to think.He does not want to think. And he can feel every open tavern door tugging at him like the brink of a well.* * *Set as an explicit, breakout intermission chapter from the otherwise “Teen and up”-ratedDefences, we follow Athos home after his rather heated session with Constance in Chapter 3.





	Bitten

This is Athos. Anyone who knows him will be familiar with his two gaits as he moves about the city – a purposeful, almost vengeful kind of stride that makes the cautiously importunate scatter, and the precision stagger of a dangerous and well-trained drunk.

This is… somewhere between the two. He looks, and this would surprise most who know him, uncertain in his swiftness, eyes a little wild, and his hand only strays off the hilt of his weapon to press the flesh of his left forearm. Whenever he notices, he flings his hand back to his belt with a flushed impatience. His undone doublet flaps a little, counterpoint to his choppy rhythm.

On the well-trod path from the Louvre Palace back to his quarters, so familiar he could probably make it blindfold, he has plenty of space and time in which to think.

He does not want to think. And he can feel every open tavern door tugging at him like the brink of a well.

No. No, better to bury this elsewhere. Better–

He picks up his pace, tugs his hat lower over his eyes.

“Hello, old chap!” hails a familiar voice as he sweeps into the garrison courtyard.

“Where’s d’Artagnan?”

“And a good afternoon to you too,” twinkles Aramis, hands busy on his disassembled musket. “Or is it technically evening yet?” He squints towards the sky. “It’s so damned grey out this week, that–”

“Where is he?”

“You just missed him. Message run. Shouldn’t be more than a few hours, I’d guess. Back by midnight, certainly.” Aramis’s eyes, sharp above his habitually soft expression, sweep him swiftly. “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” he snaps, immediately looks regretful.

“Anything I can help with?” asks his brother, softly, hands stilling. He goes to set his weapon aside.

“No, no.” He waves his hand dismissively, but Aramis sees his left tighten briefly, convulsively, on the hilt of his sword.

“As you say,” with a nod. “You know where I am if you need to talk. About anything,” he adds, raising a limpid gaze to his comrade. Athos’s eyes narrow. “Anything at all…”

Athos heaves a deep breath, opens his mouth, then shuts it with a snap, whole face fisting closed.

“Or not,” murmurs Aramis as Athos turns on the ball of his foot and departs with the short strides of a man carrying conflict like a cannonball.

He winces. That’s a terrible metaphor, no matter the assonance. Alliteration, even. And really; it would never do to be writing poems about his comrades…

“What’s _his_ issue?” asks Porthos, walking backwards from a near-bruising encounter with their friend. He rubs his upper arm briskly to underline the point.

Aramis shrugs. “I’d say ‘woman trouble’ but, well…”

“Don’t you start that again.”

“You know I’m right.”

Porthos scowls. “Did he talk to you?”

“Asked where _d’Artagnan_ was.” Aramis raises his eyebrows over his slow, deliberate reply, returning to his weapon as he does so.

Porthos is unmoved. “How’d he take it?”

“Honestly?” Aramis turns concerned eyes up to his brother, joking laid aside. “I thought, for a moment, he was going to draw on me.”

“Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Of course not.”

“He’s just in one of his moods.”

“Sure.”

Porthos plumps down next to Aramis. “You want to get indoors – it’s gonna rain soon.”

“I’ve got at least an hour of light left.”

“If you can call it that.”

They sit in silence for a while, Aramis’s hands busy again, raising pieces to sight along them from time to time.

“Do we need to follow him, do you think?”

Aramis whistles on a sigh. “We haven’t had to do that in a while.”

“True enough. Well?”

“Honestly, my friend, I just don’t know.”

“I’ll be glad when we’re back on active duty.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

As the first drops of rain hit, Aramis spits soft curses and Porthos, only laughing a little, helps him scramble the pieces together in a cloth and rush them indoors.

*

Athos paces his dim room, pushing himself off the wall each time he meets it, turns sharply at the sound of the rain hitting his sliver of window.

He takes a hard breath, then another, sheds his weapons belt with a crash, drags his doublet off, stands, hands fisting at his sides, head bowed, eyes tight shut. Seemingly without volition, his hand creeps to his forearm again, thumb rubbing. He opens his eyes and sighs, shoulders slumping.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, and, looking around, moves to light a candle. On the way, his boot strikes glass, which skitters in a swivel. He ducks to reach for it on reflex, even though he knows – none better – the sound of a drained bottle.

Then he straightens his knees and continues to the side table. Light. That's what he needs.

In the dancing softness of the flame he strides to fetch the room's one chair, cushionless and wooden, with an uncertain leg, and drags it into the light. He drops into it, leans one elbow on the arm and props his forehead on his hand. He continues in this pose for a while. Enough to count, then lose track of, at least thirty careful, deep breaths.

The heavy rain blurs all other sounds, and he finds himself slipping into a blessedly muted, grey-silver place inside his mind.

By the time he emerges from himself, the rest of the room has grown almost fully dark. He blinks rapidly, scrubs his hand down his face and, sighing, resigned, pulls off his gloves with his teeth, drops them to one side, reaches to unlace the cuffs of first his left, then his right sleeve and roll them up, slowly and methodically, to just below his elbow.

Faint but clear on the pale flesh of his inner left arm is the mark where Constance laid her teeth into him, an inspired bit of improvisation as she strove to get him to back off her in their unarmed sparring session. He closes his eyes on a light groan. What on earth had moved him to suggest such a thing?

_You’ve been seeing her as you, all those years ago, setting foot on a path to lock herself from the world, hating and craving it, and you applied your own favourite distraction – second-favourite…_

Third favourite now.

_Quite. Lose yourself in the heat and pain and effort and achievement of sparring._

It worked.

 _It_ nearly _worked._

His face twists in a wry acknowledgement. Much as they’d both been fighting to bury the all-too vivid memories of the last time they were in that room, striking out towards the dry, cordial relationship that they used to share, as their bodies heated together in mock-conflict, every other look and word seemed to be heavy with other meanings.

And. And that still. I could forget, but.

His fingers reach over and softly, for the first time, he runs his bare skin over the mark she’s left him. It flashes heat and he groans, muffled through his closed lips.

I’d no idea.

_Really? Had you not?_

He presses a little harder now, questing for that sensation buried in skin and muscle, wonders how the edges of her teeth would feel here directly. And, hot on that thought, he brings his arm up to run his lips back and forth across the spot. Then his tongue slips out to caress, and heat floods lower as he feels himself swell again, moaning about his own flesh as he opens wide, presses with his teeth to cup around the place, push deeper, _dear God_.

He breaks off, rubs his right hand hard around the back of his neck, reaches up to unlace his shirt, slip his hand to rub at the flesh just below his collarbone.

This is. It’s not. He huffs a hard outbreath. What had caught him most was the surprise of the thing, of not knowing that it was coming, was…

_Say it._

God, was the thing slipping his control.

He imagines her breath ghosting over his arm as she chooses where, when, _whether_ to… to… oh, God, fuck… to bite him.

“Hnnm!”

His left forearm rises and he ducks his head to meet it again as his right palm descends to press against the rapidly hardening bulge in his breeches. This time he runs his teeth hard along his skin from nearly elbow to wrist, turning his arm involuntarily so that the sensation curves across him and he fastens his clench of jaw into the loose skin at the back of his wrist, running the heel of his other palm hard down the underside of his cock, reaching his fingers to stroke at his balls.

His breath is rapid now, and he can feel his pulse thickening in his throat. It would seem that the sensation, surprise or no, is also a key component of his… of this…

He pushes both hands up through his hair, fingertips raking hard at his scalp. The rain continues to hammer down outside.

He rolls his shoulders to ease them, pushes them against the unforgiving back of the chair, remembers. Remembers d’Artagnan cupped behind him in Orléans, remembers rolling his shoulders and pushing back into his warmth, feeling his mounting hardness rock against him, his breath heavy against his neck as they rocked together, his moans hardening into groans. His body unseen, reconfigured by the heat at his back, the wetness slicking his spine, the fingers clutching his sides, and then, Jesus. Jesus God, his teeth fastening softly in his shoulder, the answering, astonished hunger of his own groan, the way he continued to mouth at his neck and shoulder, the way. Fuck, the way he longed for his teeth to catch in him again.

Oh, Christ. He pulls his shirt from his breeches, hissing at the friction against his straining cock, runs his hand up his own chest, reaching to squeeze and roll his nipples one after the other. His head goes back on a groan at the rush of sensation that arcs across his body.

And there’s a barrage of memories flooding him: of d’Artagnan’s teeth gentle on the loose skin of his sac as he narrates the sensation to Constance; of her gasp and startled arousal as he licks and bites into the delicate skin of her inner elbow while chastising d’Artagnan for his lack of discipline; of… of… Jesus, of the first time, in the forest, d’Artagnan, rocking, desperate, into his mouth, entreating him to bring him by any and all means, with tongue and mouth and “your teeth if needs be” and what that had called in him. He recalls Constance’s teeth scraping gently at his nipple as d’Artagnan constrained and stroked him from behind. And now he replays some of the countless times d’Artagnan has bitten his lower lip, tugging at it – the sure-fire way that will tug a mounting, hardening groan from him.

And though he swore never to think of her this way ever again, has forsworn himself too many times before renewing his vow in bitter dregs, he remembers _her_ clever mouth on him, the tiny nips of those square teeth as she nuzzled ever closer to his–

No.

No, there’s enough elsewhere for him to. Without. Oh. Oh God. A welter of remembered sensations from their mouths, and even Ninon de Larroque’s puts in an appearance, confident and passionate against his own, warm contrast to those cool cheeks, sucking and biting, Jesus, just a little, in withdrawal, looking at him like she’d own him. He moans, high-pitched and wanton.

Fuck. He starts to bite again at his forearm, harder this time, fingers of his right hand fumbling at his points. He looks down as he relinquishes his arm so that he can make a quicker job of it with both hands, sees the unmistakable imprint of his own teeth on his flesh, revelling in it even as part of him is ashamed, repulsed at the livid _wrongness_ of it. And–

And, Jesus, why does that look so familiar?

He shakes his head, presses his back into the chair, pushes his hips forward, draws himself out of his breeches, feeling the cooler air of the room curl around him just ahead of his fingers, eyes dropping closed at the familiar sensation of his own hand clutching soft and firm.

He presses the heel of his left hand into his brow as he starts to rock up into his own grip. He spares a moment to reflect, in a lightly baffled kind of astonishment, that rather less than a year ago he’d have been battling this as long as he could before furiously capitulating and ending his frustration with a series of harsh tugs, fist or wrist thrust between his teeth as a gag as he…

Oh.

And now he gives himself long, tender strokes, body rippling, sighing and moaning, licking his own forearm, teasing himself with the brush of teeth, arching up as his arousal swells, settles, swells, drawing out the sensation as he slips his fingers into his mouth, imagines d’Artagnan’s face as he suckles him… remembers d’Artagnan licking the taste of Constance from him, her sucking her own taste from him, her rocking into his mouth, fuck, the unending sweetness, the heat.

He pictures himself on his back, bed soft and firm beneath him, infinitely supporting, forgiving; summons d’Artagnan to crawl up it from beyond his feet, gaze fixed, intent, wicked; strong arms planting themselves either side of his hips; kiss-bruised mouth dropping open as he ducks to… swerve Athos’s cock and plant open-mouth kisses against his thigh. Athos’s legs gape wider, beyond his volition, as d’Artagnan drops back and down between them, lips and tongue caressing ever-higher, now lending gentle nips against him first one side then the other until the pause, the inbreath that surely means the shift to more tender flesh, and instead he fastens his teeth into his inner thigh.

“Aah!” Athos’s head drops back again with a thump, thrusting hard into his own fist as his imagined lover the next moment gentles the reverberating imprint of his bite with a broad lash of his tongue before moving to do the whole thing all over again on a fresh piece of flesh. Oh God. His breath on him, his teeth catching. Oh God. He pictures his arms crashing backwards above his head, abandoned, her catching them, her teeth on his skin.

Fuck. Fuck, close now. Oh fuck. His hand hard and steady on his swollen self as Ideal d’Artagnan gnaws at his thigh and Ideal Constance runs her eyeteeth up his inner arm from shoulder to wrist and he climaxes, hunching forward on a spasm, locking his own teeth in his forearm just over the original mark, the pain blending so effortlessly with the pleasure that later he’ll wonder how long his mind’s been heading that way after all…

He props his left elbow just above his knee, leans his forehead into his palm, lets loose a breathy set of chuckles before wiping his other hand gently up his slowly softening shaft and taking it to his mouth to lick and suck himself clean.

He looks down, dazed, sees how he’s spattered across the flagstones, which makes him grin for no reason he can properly name except that everything now seems funny, a froth of joy, and by God, drinking by himself never made him laugh, did it?

*

When Aramis knocks on the door, an hour or so later, slipping in at his hail, he is astonished to find no less than three candles lit and Athos reclining in his chair, two fingers curled over his lips, reading Ovid, of all things. The floor appears to have been swept and there are no bottles under the freshly made bed – full or otherwise. Aramis feels his brow rise, knot, rise as Athos asks, mildly: “Can I help?”

“Er,” says Aramis. “I was just… wondering if you… fancied… a meal. Out. Porthos and I – we were. That is. Did you?”

Athos marks his book carefully and lays it down. “Of course. Hold on while I fetch my doublet.” Which is hanging up, along with his hat. Aramis, eyes widening beyond his volition, fights down the urge to pinch himself.

“All right?” asks Athos, as he steps towards him, buckling himself into his weapons belt, expression blank as ever but… somehow…

Aramis nods, resolves not to think what might have occurred to lighten his brother’s stride, instead gesturing towards the candles: “Don’t you want to, er…?”

“Oh,” he says, still mild, still light, “thank you,” and calmly licks his fingers and extinguishes them, one by one, as Aramis holds the door wider open to share the broader corridor illumination.

Of all things, he seems to be smiling as he dons his hat, and steps out into the corridor, tugging on his gloves, leaving Aramis to follow after, turning to close the door and shaking his head softly. He misses Athos stroking his left arm and sighing happily, and perhaps it’s as well he does.

As it is, he wonders whether the old saw about the hair of the dog has some kind of merit after all and, shaking his head, lengthens his stride to draw alongside his brother, hailing a baffled and relieved Porthos peering out from the stairwell.

“It’s still raining,” is all he can find to say, looking as confounded as Aramis when Athos just smiles and tugs his hat further down in that familiar fashion before mounting the stairs two at a time.

“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” he mutters to Aramis.

“Let’s see.”


End file.
